Paleontology News

Aug 26, 2025 by News Staff

Around 390 million years ago (Devonian period), marine animals began colonizing depths previously uninhabited. New research led by scientists from Duke University, the University of Washington, NASA’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory and Caltech indicates this underwater migration occurred in response to a permanent increase in deep-ocean oxygen, driven by the aboveground spread of woody plants; that rise in oxygen also coincided with a period of remarkable...

Aug 25, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of stem-chelydrid turtle using complete fossilized shells and associated material found in the Early...

Aug 22, 2025 by News Staff

A new genus and species of sail-backed iguanodontian dinosaur has been identified from a partial skeleton found in the Wessex Formation of the Isle of...

Aug 19, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists have found the fossilized remains of the extinct deer species Eocoileus gentryorum at the Early Pliocene Gray Fossil Site of northeastern...

Aug 18, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Named Cordualadensa acorni, the new dragonfly species from Alberta’s Dinosaur Provincial Park represents the only Mesozoic dragonfly for Canada and fills...

Aug 14, 2025 by News Staff

Tiny, toothed mammalodontids were among the strangest of all whales. If alive today, they would be as iconically Australian as kangaroos. In a new paper...

Aug 14, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in Australia have discovered the fossilized remains of a new species in the extinct kangaroo genus Dorcopsoides. The greater forest-wallaby...

Aug 12, 2025 by News Staff

Textbooks often portray primates as originating, evolving, and dispersing exclusively within warm tropical forests. This tends to come from fossil evidence...

Aug 11, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists have identified a new species of dromaeosaurid dinosaur from an almost complete and articulated skeleton found in the 2000s in Mongolia. Life...

Aug 11, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists have identified the myriad of animals — saber-toothed predators, burrowing foragers and a large, salamander-like creature —...

Aug 5, 2025 by News Staff

During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), a period of geological rapid warming and aridification approximately 56 million years ago, a flesh-eating...

Aug 5, 2025 by News Staff

While tyrannosaurid dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex  had skulls that were optimized for high bite forces, other gigantic carnivorous dinosaurs such...

Aug 4, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Wudingloong wui lived in what is now Yunnan, China, around 200 million years ago (Early Jurassic epoch). Reconstructed skeleton and representative bones...

Aug 4, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists have identified an unusual new genus and species of early-diverging plesiosauroid plesiosaur from a nearly complete skeleton found in the...

Aug 1, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Rhynchocephalians — members of a sister group of squamates (lizards, snakes, and worm lizards) that includes the living tuatara (Sphenodon punctatus)...

Jul 28, 2025 by Enrico de Lazaro

Paleontologists in Patagonia, Argentina, have unearthed a portion of a postcranial skeleton that belonged to a previously unknown rebbachisaurid sauropod...

Jul 28, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists say they have discovered the 76-million-year-old footprints of a ceratopsian dinosaur-dominated herd in Dinosaur Provincial Park in Alberta,...

Jul 24, 2025 by News Staff

Nectocaridids are enigmatic Paleozoic animals with a controversial position. These creatures were adapted for swimming, having fins, a head region with...

Jul 23, 2025 by News Staff

Paleontologists have described a new genus and species of Triassic drepanosauromorph diapsid with striking integumentary appendages — which are neither...

Jul 23, 2025 by News Staff

First published in 1865 as a caterpillar, nearly fifty years before the discovery of Canada’s Burgess Shale, Palaeocampa anthrax shuffled between classifications...